6 February 21 • 2019
jn

NEW YORK (JTA) — 
R

ep. Ilhan Omar picked a funny 
week to tweet about the power 
of the American Israel Public 
Affairs Committee.
Earlier this month, the Senate passed 
a bill that targets the boycott Israel 
movement. The 77-23 
vote was a nice win for 
AIPAC, which backed 
it, but also held some 
worrying news for the 
pro-Israel lobby. While 
Republicans were nearly 
unanimous in their sup-
port, Democrats were 
mostly split: 25 for and 
22 against.
More significant, six of the seven 
Senate Democrats running for presi-
dent or expected to run for president 
voted no.
While the vast majority of lawmak-
ers on both sides of the aisle can be 
called or call themselves pro-Israel — 
including the six Democratic hopefuls 
— the vote undermines the notion that 
Congress is “Israel-occupied territory.” 
On the boycott bill, like any piece of 
legislation, politicians weigh the costs 
and benefits of supporting legislation 

— sometimes with their eyes on the 
short-term and sometimes the long-
term.
Even if you were able to erase AIPAC 
from the picture, it’
s not clear how 
much the landscape would change. 
Israel is a pretty easy sell in the United 
States. Jews vote and donate to political 
campaigns out of proportion to their 
numbers. Evangelical Christians are 
more uncritical than Jews in their sup-
port for Israel (and there are more of 
them). Americans as a whole are more 
likely to see their values reflected in 
Israel’
s robust if flawed democracy than 
among the dictatorships, monarchies 
and theocracies that surround it.
The vote on the boycott bill raises 
the possibility that those factors cannot 
be taken for granted, as a resistance to 
pro-Israel messaging is growing on the 
left.
In a pair of notorious tweets a few 
weekends ago, Omar leapfrogged these 
complexities to offer a simple explana-
tion for U.S. policymaking on Israel: 
“It’
s all about the Benjamins” — in 
other words, money. When pressed 
by the Forward’
s opinion editor, Batya 
Ungar-Sargon, to explain who she 
thinks is paying American politicians 
to be pro-Israel, the first-term con-

gresswoman from Minnesota replied 
“
AIPAC!”
Critics were quick to point out that 
she was wrong on facts (AIPAC is not a 
political action committee and does not 
spend money on political campaigns) 
and appeared to dip into an age-old 
trope about Jewish money and influ-
ence. Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador 
to Israel under Obama, tweeted that 
her “outrageous comments equating 
politicians’
 support for Israel with 
being bought off by American Jewish 
money are a vile anti-Semitic trope.” 
Combined with her past comments 
about Israel, including the notion that 
its government has “hypnotized” the 
world, few were willing to give the 
Muslim-American lawmaker the bene-
fit of the doubt.
I’
ll try. Let’
s say, as her supporters 
suggested, that her comments were 
merely about the influence of money 
in politics. It’
s undeniable that AIPAC 
exerts — and boasts of — enormous 
influence in politics. It doesn’
t give 
money directly to politicians, but it 
serves as a force multiplier: Its rhetor-
ical support for a candidate is a signal 
to Jewish PACs and individual donors 
across the country to back his or her 
campaign. Although AIPAC spends 

far less than mega-lobbies like the 
NRA, politicians looking to signal their 
own pro-Israel bona fides to potential 
voters and donors attend its annual 
conference and participate in its tours 
to Israel.
And honestly, money plays an outsize 
influence in American politics. It’
s fair 
game to talk about a system that allows 
NRA, Big Pharma, the energy sector, 
Wall Street and hundreds of other lob-
bies to push their own interests over 
policies that perhaps the majority of 
Americans consider sensible. (Whether 
the majority of Americans are clamor-
ing for a more evenhanded policy on 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is debat-
able, and probably not true.)
And Twitter can be a lousy place to 
debate Middle East policy and cam-
paign finance. Maybe if pressed, Omar 
might offer more than a one-word — 
or, actually, one-acronym — summary 
of what she thinks is wrong with U.S. 
Mideast policymaking.
But in invoking “
AIPAC!” as a 
metonym for the influence of money 
in politics was a minefield, and the 
idea that she doesn’
t know that by 
now — coming only a week after she 
apologized for her 7-year-old “hypno-
tized” tweet — is implausible. Rather 

commentary
Ilhan Omar is Right about Money in Politics. 
She is Wrong on AIPAC.

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